The rollout of the EA Sports FC 24 Messi Team of the Year (TOTY) card has caused a mess within the game’s community.

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Each year, EA Sports celebrates the best and brightest of football’s world stars with its Ultimate Team TOTY promotion.

This year was no different - and, surprise surprise, Argentine legend Lionel Messi was once again included, and was given one of the best player cards in the game.

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You can argue until the cows come home about whether he deserved a spot after his move to MLS team Inter Miami and out of the limelight of European football, but that’s not the issue here.

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The Messi TOTY card in FC 24 is so good that it even reached nearly 10 million coins on the Ultimate Team marketplace.

TOTY Messi was also available as a Squad Building Challenge (SBC) reward, with players earning a chance to unlock the card as a minimum rating of 86 TOTY card reward.

Somehow, EA ended up giving out way too many Messi cards as a prize for the SBC. Now, way too many players have what could be the best card in the game.

This is a problem.

Keep reading to find out everything there is to know about the FC 24 Messi TOTY situation as we explain everything that happened below.

FC 24 Messi TOTY: Situation explained as EA overshares

FC 24 Messi TOTY
FC 24: Messi TOTY card. EA Sports

The EA FC 24 Messi TOTY card was accidentally given out to way too many people as a reward for the 86+ TOTY Leagues Squad Building Challenge. Since noticing the error, EA has now taken the glitched SBC offline.

This all means that many players no longer have the chance to easily earn one of the best cards in the game, and are now upset that they missed out.

Indeed, players may have to put up with loads of teams containing the 97-rated Messi TOTY card that shouldn’t have it. It should be an incredibly rare commodity, just as the 97-rated Kylian Mbappé, Erling Haaland and Caroline Graham Hansen cards are.

Essentially, some fans believe the glitched SBC has now left the game potentially unbalanced and unfair.

Said fans aren’t happy about it, and now it's become a whole thing online.

Just take a look at the sheer amount of comments under EA’s X (formerly known as Twitter) post about taking the Messi TOTY-giving SBC offline and you’ll see what we mean:

What can EA do to rebalance the game? Fans around the world are conflicted, with some arguing that everyone should now get the Messi TOTY card as compensation.

On the flip side, others might argue that they could remove the card from the game, but that would not go down well with those who rightly packed the card despite it being glitched and too easy to do so.

Whatever EA ends up doing, you can read more about how fans feel about it all in this friendly Reddit thread.

One commenter in the thread suggests it’s now impossible to rebalance FUT: "The fact that so many people got Messi might harm the game a lot everyone who didn’t like me is gonna have to face him every game."

Time will tell how EA deals with this issue.

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